Quote

I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.

Abraham Verghese

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Inspiration
Healthcare
Half
Hospitals
Come
Joke
Orthopedics
Believe
Cat
Orthopedic
Till
Scan
Jokes
Consult
Motivation
Limb
Missing
Limbs

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

Image
God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
Abraham Verghese
Image
By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
Abraham Verghese
Image
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?
Abraham Verghese
Image
I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ... it is another story altogether.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
Abraham Verghese
Image
She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.
Abraham Verghese
Image
In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.
Abraham Verghese
Image
What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
Abraham Verghese
Image
I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. Its like a cancer thats metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
Abraham Verghese
Image
Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
Abraham Verghese
Image
When I use the word 'healing', by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at handling, but there's always a sense of the violation. 'Why me?' 'Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else's?' And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.
Abraham Verghese
Image
That's the funny thing about America--the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others. I've had my share of angels.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Another day in paradise' was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
Abraham Verghese